[The argument wasn't] that the radiation wasn't harmful, and didn't cause brain tumors.
Does that mean you can't create something that will block the radiation? Of course not. Will it prevent brain tumors? Of course not. Will it sell more phones to people who are afraid of tumors? Yes.
It does, however, mean that you can't clain in the patent application that the device might prevent brain tumors.
This is the american way. let legislators posture all they want and help their trial lawyer buddies pump up outragous fees arguing legitimate cases, but ones that should never have had to come before a judge. Legislators need to get it through their collective heads that takind action in and of itself is not an appripriate solution. It generaly helps if the action taken is in the best interests of the citizenry, or at the vary least, constitutional.
It's times like this that I wish I had gone to law school. Given the state of the high tech economy, I'd say that throughout the whgole dot com shake-out, the people who made the msot money were the Civil Rights and Intelectual Property lawyers.
First let me point out that this is rather old news. There have been articles about this sort of thing, floating around for several years
That said, it's still an interesting application for military installalations that would otherwise fall into neglect and disrepair (or cost their respective governments, big $$$ to maintain). These sorts of facilities are perfectly suited to such a use. Power requirements, independant generators, climate control, all are already in place, (as I presume the article pointed out, although when I tried to read it it had already been/.'ed).
Also, The fear-mongering mentioned by previous posters is nothing more than good business, and let's face it, there are some applications where the physical invulnerability of the facilities is a big attraction as well, but my point here is the majority of customers will be atracted to this sort of facility, not by the 6 feet of concrete surrounding their servers, but the relitive low cost and treditional data center style precausions and security service, provided at relitively low cost.
No, I havn't priced out a missile silo or abandoned sub base recently...
I'd be perfectly happy with something with the flexibility of Mylar, I don't see a need to really fold it, although that'd be neat eventually, but we have to be realistic. Accept the technology we can get.
For now though, it sounds like the rigity of the display is something that is engineered in so as to avoid the breakage previous posters hypothesized, would occur. With that in mind, give me a display that is 50% lighter and 50% thinner than standard and organic LCDs and I'm happy. It's certainly a big step in the right direction.
This, of course will have no impact on military spending relating to stealth aircraft. This is why military contract work is so profitable. First they hire you to develop a technology, then they hire you to make it inefective, then they hire you to develop a new more effective technology... A nice little perpetual spending machine. Imagine those little balls handing on strings from a bar on your desk cost the tax payers $1 million every time they complete an arc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a strong national defense, I'm just saying that It's a good business to be in.
It really is great news. I disagree that all the news on/. has been bad though. here are a couple of recent good-news articles from/. relating to spam:
I enjoyed reading these back when they were posted and I'm sure you'll enjoy them now if you missed them then. There does seem to be a pattern emerging here... I might have to move to California
Media outlets have and will continue to gight against digital recording and re-use of broadcast media, however they will eventually loose as they did with in their fight against the VCR in the early 1980s.
This will spur the wholescale adoption of product placement advertizing as a replacement for treditional advertising (which can be easily segmented and editied out of media broadcasts). Here's an Interesting Paper on Product Placement giving a pretty good synopsis of the business case for it. The issue that is not explored in detail in this paper is the advantage to production companies that if, for example, I record an episode of seinfeld, on my TiVo, then skip the ads, I still see Jerry Seinfeld holding and drinking a Yoohoo chocolate drink. This is all fine and good, but that is one advertising slot which can never be re-sold when the show is in re-runs (ie: NOW).
[T]he lectronic insertion of brand-name, 3D computer-generated products into TV shows that already are on tape. Although the virtual products are inserted into the scenes in post, the process is different from digital compositing in that the former occurs in real time. In other words, instead of physically compositing a CG box of Corn Flakes into every video frame showing Jerry Seinfeld's kitchen cabinet -- an expensive process because of the amount of time involved -- virtual product placement technology is capable of tracking the motion in the video sequence and inserting the CG box onto the cabinet shelf automatically. Therefore, after some initial computer set-up, inserting that virtual box of Corn Flakes into a 10-second video sequence takes only 10 seconds.
And suddenly it really doesn't matter if end users can easily skip over 30 seconds ob a broadcast which was taken up by a treditional ad which the viewer has no interest in seeing, because the real ad is built into the entertainment program the viewer has chosen to watch. This solves the economic problem of allowing users to edit television content in realtime, which would otherwise effect potential advertising revenues.
The use of PVRs like TiVo and especially modified PVRs like is duscussed in the aboce/. article, has and will continue to increase the speed with which virtual product placement will be adopted in favor of treditional advertising.
I'm not sure if it matters who is cool overall. It's more important to be able to find a few people who have similar likes and dislikes, who's tastes you come to trust, and who's recommendation you elect to accept in the future. Such a system could be implemented using [grumble grumble...] Microsoft's proposed SmartLinks technology, discussed on/. earlier today.
Userw who wish to participate would create their own smartlinks channel which might be implemented similarly to an RSS channel using an XML format. A database would identify similarities in links built into registered channels, and then recommend other users who's shannel you might wish to include in your SmartLinks configuration.
Most of the discussion of SmartLinks on/. in the above mentioned atticle was Microsoft Bashing, but I think the technology might have a few neat applications, when implemented with restraint. This 'Coolness Database' might be one. In order to avoid repeating myself (and I know this is bad form, sorry...), my earlier comment might shed some light on how one could implement a shared recommendation system leveraging the best features of Alexa, RealNames, NBCi QuickClick and FireFly.
The idea here is to raise the bariers to market entry. Over the last decade, it had become extremely easy to setup an ISP. The costs associated with such entry into the market were vary small. There's even a Linux HowTo for setting up an ISP.
The goal of the AOL policy is to make it more difficult for indeviduals and smaller competitors to grow and flourish in this market. As the saying goes "Keep ypur friends close, and your enemies closer". With that in mind, allow large players to continue to advertise and operate effectively in the market (to avoid such annoyances as antitrust suits) and squeeze small players out. That way you know exactly who your competition is.
Much as in the telecom industry, the biggest threats come from the small operator who develops and provides the killer app/service. It's sough to keep track of such small operators so instead, raise the bariers to entry into the market to such a degree that small operators can no longer compete, while allowing larger players (that are easy to keep track of) continue to compete. This is just good business, and as much as it pains me to say this, as far as I know, AOL/Time Warner is within their rights to refuse advertising. They can do business or not do business with whomever they please.
So, Microsoft is introducing a lot of new products. Great. Good for them. IF you don't introduce new products, you can't stay in business. Not all will succeed. This is normal.
My problem is with the way microsoft introduces products. John aludes to this with respect to keeping MSN on life support for so long until it cought on. Microsoft is now in a position to be able to introduce poor quality products and be immune to the market forces that would cause other companies to abandon poor quality products.
Microsoft has two options they seem to make use of often, they either buy the competition, obsorbing the superior product and integrating it into their own, or simply outlast the competition, allowing them to exhausr their available marketing capital and then stepping in when they are the only remaining player in the market, after the competition goes belly-up/chapter 11
John also mentions darwinian Busines practices. On this he's dead wrong. Microsoft has grown to the point now there they are immune to the normal darwinian evolution of businesses and markets. Microsoft's practice are more draconian than darwinian. Microsoft now has the ability to lay seige to an industry and simply wait out the competition. This is not a healthy business enviroment, however, most unhealthy business enviroments of this sort have a minimum efficient scale beyone which efficiencies are lost and corporations of such larger scale suffer inabilities to compete in markets governed by these forces. Microsoft is a strange animal in this way. It's difficult to sum up it's business activities in a paragraph at this point, and as such, it's hard to determine where efficiencies could be gained be a reduction in the company's scale.
Microsoft seems to behave more as a keiretsu than as a single business. Interestingly, this behavior was a model used (asside from in Japan) by HP in the early 1980s where managers were granted resources and personel to pursue product development from end to end, and grow their 'canton' on the success of each activity. Microsoft has taken this to practice (derived from the company's roots) to the next level, where there seem to be small conclaves of people pursuing entirely disjoint businesses. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but you have to give BIll credit for weaving common threads throughout such a large empire.
It may be fair use for the end user to see related pages, as determined by his or her preference, but who really wants to hear what Microsoft thinks is related...
Seriously, I can see reasonable uses for this service, bacause when it comes down to it it's the same as the NBCi Quickclick service, which is really just a combination and expansion of the Alexa and Realnames services.
In all fairness Microsoft does claim that there will be an API that will allow third parties to establish their own work/link associations, which may be good and may be bad. I can see cases where that might be valuable, where a user would be able to download a 'SmartLinks' channel file from the Wall Street Journal which would be updated regularly mich like an RSS channel, and contain links to WSJ articles on the subjects associated with highlighted words, or perhaps the user might want to install the Roger Ebert SmartLinks channel which would link any movie title to Roger's review of that movie. This service has legitimate potential, so long as users have enough control over it to prevent Microsoft from assaulting their senses with useless Microsoft links. I can see where this sort of service might be considered the next evolutionary step beyond Rich Site Summary channels and similar XML meta-content. Realistically, this service could work thew same way, where the channels have similar XML definitions, and are periodically retrieved from the source server, in order to keep up-to-date.
The important thing is the user MUST be allowed to choose which providers to accept link-lists from. There must not be a required set, where if you turn on the service you get Microsofts set of links plus whatever other link sets you want. The user must have the option to add or remove any smartlinks channel, and enable or disable any channel on a site-by-site basis. With these policies in place, the service could be made to be quite baluable and usefult to users
Item F of the 'Student Bill of Rights' section covers the free speech issue just as one would expect:
Students have a right to examine and communicate ideas by any lawful means. Students may not be subject to discipline because of their constitutionally protected exercise of freedom of association, assembly, expression and the press.
There is no suprise here. Unfortunately, we don't know under what provisions he's being expelled. Items A2 and A5 of section III of the code seem potentially pertinent:
2. Intentional disruption or obstruction of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary proceedings or other University activities.
More likely A5 though:
Unauthorized or improper use of any University property,
equipment, facilities, or resources including unauthorized entry into any University room, building or premises.
Also, he might be expelled under terms of the Computer/Network acceptable use Policy, governing the use of the university IT Infastructure. This document as well, is pretty standard as these sorts of things go. It states that they can do pretty much whatever they please:
Accounts on NetCom systems may be terminated or disabled with little or no notice for any of the reasons stated above or for other inappropriate use of computing and network resources.
It conveniently doesn't say anything about what 'other inappropriate uses' are.
As for computer crimes, I'd love to know what computer crimes have been comitted. Presumable, if and when charges are filed, all of this will become a matter of public record, and the university can expel the student for merely having charges broght against him, but the million dollar question is What charges could be filed in this case?
Access is the real issue here. Even in 1848 if a copy of a newspaper was shipped from the US to Australia the place of publication was still the United States, and the intended readership was the United States, unless of course the publisher is the one shipping the paper to Australia.
The distinction of weather the material is delivered via sailing ship or optical fibre is not relevent as far as I can tell.
With regard to determining the place of publication and/or intended audience, as far as I know, cases involving websites thatoffer casino gambling, have set the precident in this area. If the website is served from a computer room in Antigua, that is it's location of publication. It's intended audiance is determined by such things as placing a link on the webpage stating that if it is illegal to ganble in your justisdiction, then you are not permitted to proceed.
With this in mind, I suppose all the WSJ needs to do in order to be in complience is to put similar verbage on their site that if you're in austrelia, you are not permitted to proceed further on the website. Granted that on it's face this proposal is rediculous, but it's no less rediculous than citing case law from 1848 in a civil complaint.
So is this then Netscape's second death? First they make browsers, then they're a portal (as announced circa 1998), then they're bought by AOL, which brilliantly gave SUN all of the company's real products. And now they're a portal again? Weren't they a portal before? Back when they announced the deployment of MyNetscape...
But wait a minute, now they want to start developing media agrogation products (maybe)? Weren't they o their way to doing that before all their server products were sold off to sun as the iPlanet 'partnertswhip'?
Sounds like yet another major direction change... Bad management? or maybe I'm just confused...
Oh, and for anyone who needs a recap of the earlier merger speculation around Netscape, before AOL bought them, here's a pretty good article from 1998 that evaluates each potential suitor as to what they would have added to the company.
I asked abot this type of cross-OS authentication integration via Kerberos back at a Win2K launch event after reading about their highly touted Kerberos support. After chewing up and spitting out several Microsoft PR drones, I located a guy who appeared more knowlegable.
While, yes, Microsoft has adopted Kerberos for authentication, No, it was not compatible with any existing Kerb tickets. Aparently, Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, chose to place Win2K domain authentication data in the comments field of Kerb tickets generated via a Win2K login.
This has the result of making it possible to use tickts generated through Win2K authentication within treditional UNIX Kerb realms, but tickets generated outside Win2K would not work. There would be an easy solution to this problem if Microsoft would release details of the chhanges they made to the Kerb ticket format. As of my inquiry (Feb 2000) Microsoft had not provided details of these changes. This may have changes since then.
Huh? What are you (previous poster) saying? Under that logic ig I were to write a plugin for Photoshop, and release it under the GPL, then I would cause Adobe to suddeny be in violation of the GPL (through no action of their own)? I think you mis-understood my earlier suggestion, because the interpretation of the GPL presented by the previous poster makes absoluitly no sense.
Steve Ballmer doesn't know his epidemiology. In fact, Microsoft is a cancer. Any program which includes Microsoft componants suddenly starts growing out of control until it becomes bloated and unusable.
In all fairness however, I can see how he might make the mistake of thinking the the GPL is Visus-like (not cancer-like however) in that it does attach itself to the IP it touches, but with properly written code, you can include functionality based on GPL'd source, as a plugin to your main application. This preserves the treditional IP state of your product, if you're so short sighted as to choose not to GPL your entire product.
I completely agree. Amazon has disappointed me far too frequently, but far more disappointing is the lack or resolve on the part of the FTC. This is the orgamization that's supposed to protect the public from behavior such as that of Alexa and Amazon. If they can't scrape together the fortitude to go enforce the law, what are we, joe public supposed to do. I guess Class Action lawsuits are the answer, but I have a moral objection to putting money into the pockets when it should be coming back to us, the users.
Well, he starts off with the usual babblings about AI:
Computers are already beginning to operate more like the human brain, he says, and that will accelerate. The surprise is that although they'll be a lot smarter than we are, it won't be an intelligence to fear.
No kidding. The only computer you have to fear is the one that's programmed to be creative. Without creativity, it can't decide that it WANTs anything that it isn't programed to want. As long as we avoid programming computers to be creative, we'll never have one that creatively decides that the solution to the problem is to enslave humanity. As such, the computer (program) that I'm most frightened of is >a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/01/05/13/153224 5_F.shtml">Aaron.
I'm not sure that I can agree with that. So, the FBI is free to act counter to the laws of other countries, in order to aprehend criminals in the United States? Really?
So what happens when the russian cops file extredition papers with the US state depertment, to extradite the FBI agents who commmitted these crimes? Do you think they'd be honored? Sounds like an international incident waiting to happen.
Bigelow said the private space station would be a destination for space tourists and could be used by drug firms and other manufacturers who benefit from a zero-gravity environment.
The next paragraph says they don't yet have a way to get tourists into space. That's OK. I like the other revenue stream mentioned. Rent out lab space to drug companies. So there are a lot of companies that want to do zero G research, but the other advantage is, there's no clear information on which government has jurisdiction. Ah, here's a great place to do all those human closing experiments I've been meaning to do!
In all seriousness, in light of that, why is Bigallow even bothering with the FAA? Why doesn't he go lease some small island and work with the Russian or Chinese space program or the up and coming Austrelian Space PRogram to get resources and transportation needed to construct his space station. After all, what yould the US government do? threaten to blow it out of the sky? Somehow I don't think the public would take to that vary well. As it is, I can Garuntee that if he gets the license he's seeking, one of the provisions of the deal will be that the space station will be governed by US law. Probably not the most ideal if youwant to rent out Lab space to pharmicutical companies...
This is ausome. Although battleBots seems more appealing on a basic level, perhaps it's the saw blades and knives... Who knows... Neat though.
I'm just waiting for the real thing. Has anyone thought about the proportions of these robots. The scale of the robots with respect to the fire? I wouldn't want these things appearing at my house even if it were on fire. They'd probably cause more damage than they'd prevent.
Slashdot Mirror
--CTH
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Is this the measure of critical mass for an OSS Project? When they hire their first employee, or is there some other more appropriate measure?
--CTH
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This is the american way. let legislators posture all they want and help their trial lawyer buddies pump up outragous fees arguing legitimate cases, but ones that should never have had to come before a judge. Legislators need to get it through their collective heads that takind action in and of itself is not an appripriate solution. It generaly helps if the action taken is in the best interests of the citizenry, or at the vary least, constitutional.
It's times like this that I wish I had gone to law school. Given the state of the high tech economy, I'd say that throughout the whgole dot com shake-out, the people who made the msot money were the Civil Rights and Intelectual Property lawyers.
--CTH
---
First let me point out that this is rather old news. There have been articles about this sort of thing, floating around for several years
/.'ed).
That said, it's still an interesting application for military installalations that would otherwise fall into neglect and disrepair (or cost their respective governments, big $$$ to maintain). These sorts of facilities are perfectly suited to such a use. Power requirements, independant generators, climate control, all are already in place, (as I presume the article pointed out, although when I tried to read it it had already been
Also, The fear-mongering mentioned by previous posters is nothing more than good business, and let's face it, there are some applications where the physical invulnerability of the facilities is a big attraction as well, but my point here is the majority of customers will be atracted to this sort of facility, not by the 6 feet of concrete surrounding their servers, but the relitive low cost and treditional data center style precausions and security service, provided at relitively low cost.
No, I havn't priced out a missile silo or abandoned sub base recently...
--CTH
---
I'd be perfectly happy with something with the flexibility of Mylar, I don't see a need to really fold it, although that'd be neat eventually, but we have to be realistic. Accept the technology we can get.
For now though, it sounds like the rigity of the display is something that is engineered in so as to avoid the breakage previous posters hypothesized, would occur. With that in mind, give me a display that is 50% lighter and 50% thinner than standard and organic LCDs and I'm happy. It's certainly a big step in the right direction.
--CTH
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- A piece from Free Republic
- A paper from Military Information Technology Online
I found both sonewhat interesting but vary light on details...Enjoy!
--CTH
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This, of course will have no impact on military spending relating to stealth aircraft. This is why military contract work is so profitable. First they hire you to develop a technology, then they hire you to make it inefective, then they hire you to develop a new more effective technology... A nice little perpetual spending machine. Imagine those little balls handing on strings from a bar on your desk cost the tax payers $1 million every time they complete an arc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a strong national defense, I'm just saying that It's a good business to be in.
--CTH
---
It really is great news. I disagree that all the news on /. has been bad though. here are a couple of recent good-news articles from /. relating to spam:
I Won A Lawsuit Against A Spammer
California Passes anti-spam Legislation
California ISP Sues Spammer and Wins
I enjoyed reading these back when they were posted and I'm sure you'll enjoy them now if you missed them then. There does seem to be a pattern emerging here... I might have to move to California
--CTH
This will spur the wholescale adoption of product placement advertizing as a replacement for treditional advertising (which can be easily segmented and editied out of media broadcasts). Here's an Interesting Paper on Product Placement giving a pretty good synopsis of the business case for it. The issue that is not explored in detail in this paper is the advantage to production companies that if, for example, I record an episode of seinfeld, on my TiVo, then skip the ads, I still see Jerry Seinfeld holding and drinking a Yoohoo chocolate drink. This is all fine and good, but that is one advertising slot which can never be re-sold when the show is in re-runs (ie: NOW).
Well, Not so. Enter Virtual Product Placement. This advertising methodology is described as: And suddenly it really doesn't matter if end users can easily skip over 30 seconds ob a broadcast which was taken up by a treditional ad which the viewer has no interest in seeing, because the real ad is built into the entertainment program the viewer has chosen to watch. This solves the economic problem of allowing users to edit television content in realtime, which would otherwise effect potential advertising revenues.
The use of PVRs like TiVo and especially modified PVRs like is duscussed in the aboce
--CTH
I'm not sure if it matters who is cool overall. It's more important to be able to find a few people who have similar likes and dislikes, who's tastes you come to trust, and who's recommendation you elect to accept in the future. Such a system could be implemented using [grumble grumble...] Microsoft's proposed SmartLinks technology, discussed on /. earlier today.
/. in the above mentioned atticle was Microsoft Bashing, but I think the technology might have a few neat applications, when implemented with restraint. This 'Coolness Database' might be one. In order to avoid repeating myself (and I know this is bad form, sorry...), my earlier comment might shed some light on how one could implement a shared recommendation system leveraging the best features of Alexa, RealNames, NBCi QuickClick and FireFly.
Userw who wish to participate would create their own smartlinks channel which might be implemented similarly to an RSS channel using an XML format. A database would identify similarities in links built into registered channels, and then recommend other users who's shannel you might wish to include in your SmartLinks configuration.
Most of the discussion of SmartLinks on
--CTH
The idea here is to raise the bariers to market entry. Over the last decade, it had become extremely easy to setup an ISP. The costs associated with such entry into the market were vary small. There's even a Linux HowTo for setting up an ISP.
The goal of the AOL policy is to make it more difficult for indeviduals and smaller competitors to grow and flourish in this market. As the saying goes "Keep ypur friends close, and your enemies closer". With that in mind, allow large players to continue to advertise and operate effectively in the market (to avoid such annoyances as antitrust suits) and squeeze small players out. That way you know exactly who your competition is.
Much as in the telecom industry, the biggest threats come from the small operator who develops and provides the killer app/service. It's sough to keep track of such small operators so instead, raise the bariers to entry into the market to such a degree that small operators can no longer compete, while allowing larger players (that are easy to keep track of) continue to compete. This is just good business, and as much as it pains me to say this, as far as I know, AOL/Time Warner is within their rights to refuse advertising. They can do business or not do business with whomever they please.
--CTH
So, Microsoft is introducing a lot of new products. Great. Good for them. IF you don't introduce new products, you can't stay in business. Not all will succeed. This is normal.
My problem is with the way microsoft introduces products. John aludes to this with respect to keeping MSN on life support for so long until it cought on. Microsoft is now in a position to be able to introduce poor quality products and be immune to the market forces that would cause other companies to abandon poor quality products.
Microsoft has two options they seem to make use of often, they either buy the competition, obsorbing the superior product and integrating it into their own, or simply outlast the competition, allowing them to exhausr their available marketing capital and then stepping in when they are the only remaining player in the market, after the competition goes belly-up/chapter 11
John also mentions darwinian Busines practices. On this he's dead wrong. Microsoft has grown to the point now there they are immune to the normal darwinian evolution of businesses and markets. Microsoft's practice are more draconian than darwinian. Microsoft now has the ability to lay seige to an industry and simply wait out the competition. This is not a healthy business enviroment, however, most unhealthy business enviroments of this sort have a minimum efficient scale beyone which efficiencies are lost and corporations of such larger scale suffer inabilities to compete in markets governed by these forces. Microsoft is a strange animal in this way. It's difficult to sum up it's business activities in a paragraph at this point, and as such, it's hard to determine where efficiencies could be gained be a reduction in the company's scale.
Microsoft seems to behave more as a keiretsu than as a single business. Interestingly, this behavior was a model used (asside from in Japan) by HP in the early 1980s where managers were granted resources and personel to pursue product development from end to end, and grow their 'canton' on the success of each activity. Microsoft has taken this to practice (derived from the company's roots) to the next level, where there seem to be small conclaves of people pursuing entirely disjoint businesses. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft but you have to give BIll credit for weaving common threads throughout such a large empire.
--CTH
It may be fair use for the end user to see related pages, as determined by his or her preference, but who really wants to hear what Microsoft thinks is related...
Seriously, I can see reasonable uses for this service, bacause when it comes down to it it's the same as the NBCi Quickclick service, which is really just a combination and expansion of the Alexa and Realnames services.
In all fairness Microsoft does claim that there will be an API that will allow third parties to establish their own work/link associations, which may be good and may be bad. I can see cases where that might be valuable, where a user would be able to download a 'SmartLinks' channel file from the Wall Street Journal which would be updated regularly mich like an RSS channel, and contain links to WSJ articles on the subjects associated with highlighted words, or perhaps the user might want to install the Roger Ebert SmartLinks channel which would link any movie title to Roger's review of that movie. This service has legitimate potential, so long as users have enough control over it to prevent Microsoft from assaulting their senses with useless Microsoft links. I can see where this sort of service might be considered the next evolutionary step beyond Rich Site Summary channels and similar XML meta-content. Realistically, this service could work thew same way, where the channels have similar XML definitions, and are periodically retrieved from the source server, in order to keep up-to-date.
The important thing is the user MUST be allowed to choose which providers to accept link-lists from. There must not be a required set, where if you turn on the service you get Microsofts set of links plus whatever other link sets you want. The user must have the option to add or remove any smartlinks channel, and enable or disable any channel on a site-by-site basis. With these policies in place, the service could be made to be quite baluable and usefult to users
--CTH
Item F of the 'Student Bill of Rights' section covers the free speech issue just as one would expect: There is no suprise here. Unfortunately, we don't know under what provisions he's being expelled. Items A2 and A5 of section III of the code seem potentially pertinent: More likely A5 though: Also, he might be expelled under terms of the Computer/Network acceptable use Policy, governing the use of the university IT Infastructure. This document as well, is pretty standard as these sorts of things go. It states that they can do pretty much whatever they please: It conveniently doesn't say anything about what 'other inappropriate uses' are.
As for computer crimes, I'd love to know what computer crimes have been comitted. Presumable, if and when charges are filed, all of this will become a matter of public record, and the university can expel the student for merely having charges broght against him, but the million dollar question is What charges could be filed in this case?
--CTH
Access is the real issue here. Even in 1848 if a copy of a newspaper was shipped from the US to Australia the place of publication was still the United States, and the intended readership was the United States, unless of course the publisher is the one shipping the paper to Australia.
The distinction of weather the material is delivered via sailing ship or optical fibre is not relevent as far as I can tell.
With regard to determining the place of publication and/or intended audience, as far as I know, cases involving websites thatoffer casino gambling, have set the precident in this area. If the website is served from a computer room in Antigua, that is it's location of publication. It's intended audiance is determined by such things as placing a link on the webpage stating that if it is illegal to ganble in your justisdiction, then you are not permitted to proceed.
With this in mind, I suppose all the WSJ needs to do in order to be in complience is to put similar verbage on their site that if you're in austrelia, you are not permitted to proceed further on the website. Granted that on it's face this proposal is rediculous, but it's no less rediculous than citing case law from 1848 in a civil complaint.
--CTH
So is this then Netscape's second death? First they make browsers, then they're a portal (as announced circa 1998), then they're bought by AOL, which brilliantly gave SUN all of the company's real products. And now they're a portal again? Weren't they a portal before? Back when they announced the deployment of MyNetscape...
But wait a minute, now they want to start developing media agrogation products (maybe)? Weren't they o their way to doing that before all their server products were sold off to sun as the iPlanet 'partnertswhip'?
Sounds like yet another major direction change... Bad management? or maybe I'm just confused...
Oh, and for anyone who needs a recap of the earlier merger speculation around Netscape, before AOL bought them, here's a pretty good article from 1998 that evaluates each potential suitor as to what they would have added to the company.
--CTH
I asked abot this type of cross-OS authentication integration via Kerberos back at a Win2K launch event after reading about their highly touted Kerberos support. After chewing up and spitting out several Microsoft PR drones, I located a guy who appeared more knowlegable.
While, yes, Microsoft has adopted Kerberos for authentication, No, it was not compatible with any existing Kerb tickets. Aparently, Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, chose to place Win2K domain authentication data in the comments field of Kerb tickets generated via a Win2K login.
This has the result of making it possible to use tickts generated through Win2K authentication within treditional UNIX Kerb realms, but tickets generated outside Win2K would not work. There would be an easy solution to this problem if Microsoft would release details of the chhanges they made to the Kerb ticket format. As of my inquiry (Feb 2000) Microsoft had not provided details of these changes. This may have changes since then.
--CTH
Huh? What are you (previous poster) saying? Under that logic ig I were to write a plugin for Photoshop, and release it under the GPL, then I would cause Adobe to suddeny be in violation of the GPL (through no action of their own)? I think you mis-understood my earlier suggestion, because the interpretation of the GPL presented by the previous poster makes absoluitly no sense.
Steve Ballmer doesn't know his epidemiology. In fact, Microsoft is a cancer. Any program which includes Microsoft componants suddenly starts growing out of control until it becomes bloated and unusable.
In all fairness however, I can see how he might make the mistake of thinking the the GPL is Visus-like (not cancer-like however) in that it does attach itself to the IP it touches, but with properly written code, you can include functionality based on GPL'd source, as a plugin to your main application. This preserves the treditional IP state of your product, if you're so short sighted as to choose not to GPL your entire product.
--CTH
I completely agree. Amazon has disappointed me far too frequently, but far more disappointing is the lack or resolve on the part of the FTC. This is the orgamization that's supposed to protect the public from behavior such as that of Alexa and Amazon. If they can't scrape together the fortitude to go enforce the law, what are we, joe public supposed to do. I guess Class Action lawsuits are the answer, but I have a moral objection to putting money into the pockets when it should be coming back to us, the users.
--CTH
Aaron Software
I'm not sure that I can agree with that. So, the FBI is free to act counter to the laws of other countries, in order to aprehend criminals in the United States? Really?
So what happens when the russian cops file extredition papers with the US state depertment, to extradite the FBI agents who commmitted these crimes? Do you think they'd be honored? Sounds like an international incident waiting to happen.
In all seriousness, in light of that, why is Bigallow even bothering with the FAA? Why doesn't he go lease some small island and work with the Russian or Chinese space program or the up and coming Austrelian Space PRogram to get resources and transportation needed to construct his space station. After all, what yould the US government do? threaten to blow it out of the sky? Somehow I don't think the public would take to that vary well. As it is, I can Garuntee that if he gets the license he's seeking, one of the provisions of the deal will be that the space station will be governed by US law. Probably not the most ideal if youwant to rent out Lab space to pharmicutical companies...
--CTH
This is ausome. Although battleBots seems more appealing on a basic level, perhaps it's the saw blades and knives... Who knows... Neat though.
I'm just waiting for the real thing. Has anyone thought about the proportions of these robots. The scale of the robots with respect to the fire? I wouldn't want these things appearing at my house even if it were on fire. They'd probably cause more damage than they'd prevent.